“Hard to Believe Someone This Chaotic Has So Much Power”: Alex Gibney’s Explosive New Documentary on Elon Musk

According to CinemaDrame News Agency, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney takes a revelatory look at the personality and scale of power surrounding Elon Musk—the world’s wealthiest man—in a new film that paints a portrait of someone who could be among the most dangerous individuals on Earth.

On a late-August evening inside an editing room in Manhattan, final touches were being made to a documentary that has already stirred considerable alarm and anxiety. On the large screen, Musk walks following an inauguration ceremony in Washington as someone asks him, “Mr. Musk, what does power taste like?” In the next sequence, Musk sits at a round table alongside Fox News host Jesse Watters and a group of young Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers—youths speaking with misplaced confidence about restructuring the government.

The 72-year-old Gibney, one of cinema’s premier investigative documentary filmmakers who previously examined Scientology, Enron, the U.S. military, Vladimir Putin, and the Catholic Church, began work on the project in late 2022. Originally, he was preparing a two-hour documentary for HBO detailing Musk’s childhood in South Africa, his early days in Silicon Valley, the development of SpaceX, the takeover of Tesla, the deployment of Starlink satellite internet, events at Neuralink, the purchase of Twitter, and the turbulence of his personal life.

However, Musk’s massive financial contributions to Donald Trump and his prominent role in the campaign leading up to Trump’s return to the White House opened a whole new chapter. HBO executives requested continued filming, and Gibney extended production for another two years to cover Musk’s activities with DOGE in 2025 and the initial public offering of SpaceX. The version prepared for the Venice and Toronto film festivals runs 3 hours and 45 minutes, with a theatrical release scheduled for October via Bleecker Street. A four-hour cut of the film is set to air on HBO in 2027.

Musk, which makes its world premiere out of competition at the Venice International Film Festival on September 8, offers a detailed and methodical portrait of an individual who, in the director’s view, is amassing unprecedented power for personal and political leverage by controlling vast streams of data. Gibney characterizes Musk as a huckster whose entire power structure relies on the stock market and who, unless exposed, could inflict irreversible damage.

The first half of the film examines issues such as Musk taking credit from true Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, pressuring his former partner into non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), exaggerating Tesla’s self-driving capabilities (which the film alleges contributed to over 60 deaths), and painful animal testing at Neuralink. Gibney argues that, contrary to his self-promoted image, Musk lacks strong operational management skills and is instead a master at selling grandiose narratives.

The second half turns toward a far larger scope: global influence. It touches on Starlink becoming a political decision-maker during conflicts, NASA’s heavy reliance on SpaceX, the leverage of Twitter to extract concessions from world leaders, and the potential use of data collected via DOGE for political retribution and campaign targeting. According to Gibney, while Trump spent years attempting to dominate state power, Musk is attempting something far more dangerous: rendering the core function of government obsolete.

Two key claims in the film regarding election intervention and data surveillance have drawn widespread attention. Ashley St. Clair, a former conservative personality and ex-partner of Musk, notes in the film that prior to the final results of the November 2024 election, Musk expressed an unusual certainty of victory, texting her: “I have 10,000 lasers in space”—an apparent reference to the Starlink satellite array.

Another claim involves Musk’s four-month tenure in Washington. According to whistleblowers and experts like Wired editor Katie Drummond, super-admin access granted to Musk’s team across federal IT systems allowed for the copying of confidential data belonging to millions of American citizens. Nobel laureate and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton warns in the film that this volume of personal data could be weaponized for manipulation and to create an unfair advantage in national elections.

To address Musk’s refusal to sit for a direct interview—having pre-emptively dismissed the documentary as a “hit piece”—Gibney devised a creative solution. The film’s research team compiled archival audio recordings of Musk to build a 3D video-game avatar that speaks his exact words in first-person sequences. The concept was inspired by Musk’s own expressed belief that our universe may be a computer simulation.

Toward the end of the film, podcaster and former associate Sam Harris remarks: “We are living in a world where one person’s psychological volatility translates into massive consequences for politics, economics, and geopolitics. It’s completely insane that someone this chaotic—who was never elected by the public—holds this much power.”

The documentary’s release faces potential legal and media challenges. Management shifts at Warner Bros. Discovery and the presence of David Ellison as the new owner at HBO could impact distribution plans, given that Larry Ellison (David Ellison’s father) is a close financial ally of Musk. Nonetheless, the filmmakers have cleared all legal hurdles and remain fully prepared for the film’s wide release.

How Hollywood Built the Myth of Elon Musk

Over the years, film and television productions helped construct the image of a benevolent tech genius:

• Iron Man 2 (2010): Helped foster the popular perception that the character of Tony Stark was inspired by Musk.
• The Simpsons (2015): Portrayed him as the world’s greatest living inventor working to help humanity.
• The Big Bang Theory (2015): Featured Musk playing himself, volunteering at a soup kitchen.
• Rick and Morty (2019): Featured Musk voicing a parallel-universe version of himself named “Elon Tusk.”
• Saturday Night Live (2021): Hosted the show, offering a curated, lighthearted public persona around his controversial decisions and space ventures.